Tuesday, November 24, 2015

It has finally happened

And that is a bit disconcerting to me, because I am a liberal. Or thought I was.

"It's really difficult to distinguish between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation," he said, speaking on behalf of the four. "Because yoga is considered in the Hindu equivalent of the Bible ... we decided that it was inherently a Hindu ritual practice."And so because of that, taking it away from its spiritual significance – taking the 'yoganess' out of yoga – is problematic and it does render it culturally appropriative because it becomes colonial and secularized."

Let me just state for the record that I am certainly against cultural genocide. I'm also opposed to Yoga, because it is unreasonably difficult. But I don't know how much yoganess there was in the yoga I tried. I might have had too much yoganess, or possibly too little.

And "culturally appropriative" is something of a puzzler. No one has ever tried to appropriate my culture, what with me being from Florida and all. I'm going to have to have someone clarify this for me. I betcha ten bucks that the explanation will involve "hierarchy" and "otherness."

3 comments:

Steve
said...

So cultural appropriation is not that much of a head scratcher for me. Every time I see a facebook post with some picture of an Indian (feather, not dot) in full regalia with some wooey saying about saving the great spirit of the totem animal earth rainforest I note the irony of cultural appropriation by some white girl who means well but has no idea what the fuck they are talking about.

(Yoga has long since been appropriated though. Personally, I want to start a workout routine based on Catholic genuflecting, kneeling, and telling a rosary.)

However, let's talk about censorship and restrictions on speech in the name of "safe spaces" or trigger warnings so that these campus liberals don't have to hear disturbing ideas. This is where the campus liberals have really lost me. What ever happened to the ACLU defending the right of Nazi's to march? Now that was some badass liberal commitment.

I don't get safe spaces and trigger warnings either. But I worry about rejecting them out of hand. Just like it would be impossible for me to explain to my great-grandfather that a) Of course women can vote, and b) Of course people of different races can marry, maybe 100 years from now it will be inconceivable that you could have a civilized society without Safe Spaces.

Eventually, one of these wacky moonbat ideas is going to take root and slowly become mainstream, and I'm going to be left on the porch waving my cane and shouting angrily at all the things.

Starboard

Aft

Avast

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